I keep seeing tags/posts about the gay sex cats ai art thing that are like “deciding what art is good is elitist and weird” and “more effort doesn’t mean better art” and these people really Egalitarian Politic-ed their way right out of any meaningful interaction with art. Art being made by a human does matter and that’s okay!!! Van Gogh’s paintings are better when you read his letters and a drawing made for you by a friend will always be more beautiful than clip art and that’s the whole point!!!! “Worth” in art is not just monetary and art can be good or bad in a million different ways and that’s (fundamentally) what experiencing art is all about to me. Understanding why is the fun part!!
I think people get it more with writing so I’m gonna reanimate the corpse of Gabbie Hanna’s poetry book that was Not Very Good in terms of poetry meant to be purchased and read by other people. She went on a tirade about how it was cathartic to write for her and that’s wonderful (and I really mean that I’m not being snarky. that’s a beautiful thing) but you cannot charge people money for your unedited notes app excerpts and then get mad when they critique it for not being “worth” the money they paid. That writing is “worth” so much to the person who wrote it but it is not worth anything to the audience paying for it. And that’s art babey!!!! Duchamp’s fountain was never meant to be placed in a museum and gazed upon without context it was a physical manifestation against fascism tied to particular people in a particular time. A photorealistic drawing of a crumpled playing card on a white background is infinitely more impressive and artistic than the picture on my camera roll of the exact same thing both from a technical skill aspect and because it has entered the artist and emerged as art.
Basically please don’t let hand wringing theory about capitalism and commodification flatten your experience with art into some sort of disjointed morass of shapes and colors.